I'm home.

Does anyone still read this? I kind of figured that most people knew I was home... I still meant to update a while ago but things have been busy. Real busy. Good busy though. It's so nice to be home!! I'm not really doing much of anything productive but I'm just enjoying spending time with people and watching those last few Christmas movies before we pack them up until next year. I'm looking for a job... sort of. If you hear of any good opportunities, you should let me know : )

That's pretty much it for right now but maybe I'll continue to post something every now and then... it's kind of fun. Hope you had a very merry Christmas.

Still Alive!

And having a blast! I know, it's been a few days since I blogged, but we have been crazy busy! I'm only going to give you a (very) brief overview and then I really need to be getting to sleep.
Last Thursday, the three of us went into London and took a 4 hour bike tour through the city. BEST day I had spent in London yet. It was absolutely phenomenal. The weather was brilliant and we saw so so so much in a short amount of time.

Including Peter : ) We like him.

The next morning, Hilde was off to spend the day in London before heading home to Norway and Steven and I hopped on a train for Oxford. We spent the day exploring and then met up with Victoria.

Saturday morning we drove to Birmingham. We helped her family with the Christmas Fayre at her church and then went to the Birmingham City football match vs. West Ham. Followed by dinner at The Fox. A carvery restaurant (I will explain this later).

Sunday, we drove to Lichfield, wandered through the cathedral, met with Laura and her boyfriend for tea and then drove to Tamworth to see the castle. Woo hoo! Castle!!

It was a rather small castle but we had a smashing good time -- particularly with the dress-up clothes...

That night we made dinner for Victoria's family and had a relaxing evening in their home.

Monday -- Victoria took us for a fantastic fish and chips lunch, which we ate in her car while sitting at a park, and then went into Birmingham for a quick wander around before Steven and I caught a train into London. Where we saw Wicked. Marvelous. Absolutely marvelous. Loved it.

Tuesday morning (today - yay -- wow, I breezed through the weekend...) we took a little ride on the London Eye. It's that gigantic ferris wheel looking thing. Before going on the Eye they send you through this real short 4-D film... somewhat unnecessary. (p.s. 4-D means they spit things at you, like bubbles.)

There we are! What a view!! Hilde, you could totally do this. I felt safe and secure the whole time. The height thing didn't even bother me : )

Hmm.... thanks Steven, that's a nice one.... looks like I'm inspecting the Tube map.... where to next? Well, we had just walked around the Parliament buildings and Westminster Abbey and we decided it was time for lunch.

Steak and Ale pie AGAIN!!! Well, only the second time at this particular restaurant but... I'll admit, we've had it at EVERY pub we've gone into -- it's Steven's fav. We also popped into the National Portrait Gallery while we were in Trafalgar Square.

We visited the Natural History Museum. I was SO excited!!! I had been saving this one to go to with Steven. I think it is the best museum in the city! Seriously. The most interesting by far. I like the animals : )

After about 2 and a half hours in the museum (not enough, we left so much unseen), we walked a couple of blocks down the street to the Radisson Hotel for an Edwardian afternoon tea experience. Can you believe I almost left the country without having afternoon tea??? We were both so so glad we decided to do this. There was so much food! Six finger sandwiches each, scones, jam, clotted cream, fruit tarts... and LOADS of tea!! We were stuffed by the end. it was really relaxing and a nice break after a long weekend.

Tomorrow is our last day in London, sigh. We're going to make the most of it though. We plan to see the Tower of London and Hampton Court and take some cool pictures of the Tower Bridge. We'll tell you all about it later!! (and if you feel like you got cheated out of the copious amount of details I usually provide do not fear! I promise to fill you in when I get the chance)

off to bed!!!

love,

Steph

Steven's Here!!!!!

Yay-yay-YAY!!!! Oh my word. I could hardly sleep last night. I woke up at 5:30 this morning (an hour before I needed to get up) thinking "can I go now? maybe his plane will be early." I was super anxious. It was SO good to see Steven!! So so good! I can't even tell you how good.

Hilde spent the day in Oxford with Victoria so Steven and I had the whole day to ourselves : ) Hilde was oh so sweet and super understanding of the fact that Steven wasn't particularly wanting to share me today so she made plans to go somewhere else. I took Steven to the lake and showed him around Virginia Water, which takes all of 3 minutes.

It was such a lovely day to be at the lake! It wasn't sunny but it wasn't raining and that's a huge bonus these days!! It still isn't all that cold here either, which is wonderful. We walked around and saw the Cascade/Grotto (above) and then found some ruins.

We were a bit disappointed that we couldn't actually sort out what had been ruined... but the old columns and bricks and stones and statues still looked really cool : )

We were both real tired by the time we got back to the house and spent the rest of the afternoon slash evening watching Friends (because I do that everyday), eating left-over chili and playing Scrabble. Then we met Hilde on her way back from the train station and we all enjoyed tea and cookies (again), which was quite nice.

Tomorrow, we're all headed into London! It's going to be wonderful!!

GOODNIGHT!

Hilde's Here!!!

There we are!!! TOGETHER! In the same country and everything!

How cool is that? Hilde came all this way just to visit me : ) I was so so so so SO excited to see her when she got off the train today. I was pretty much jumping up and down. Quite literally.

It's a bit strange to have a little bit of my Seattle life fitting in here with my Virginia Water life but I quite like it. We've just been chatting all afternoon/evening and it has been lovely.

We watched the first half of White Christmas just now while enjoying some peppermint tea (no caffeine!!!) and a plate of goodies: fudge, snowball cookies and some marzipan all the way from Norway! See the little marzipan piggies? I trapped them with cookies and fudge. Wonderful.

Steven is currently on the airplane. When I wake up I get to go pick him up from the airport : )

We're both exhausted. Off to bed!

Feeling Festive.

I had a play date yesterday. Kimberly's friend came over and brought her three year old daughter Natasha with her. We made gingerbread cookies! Natasha wasn't too into actually making the dough but she enjoyed cutting out the shapes and she really really enjoyed decorating the cookies. I just made a little bit of icing and and she used that as "glue" to stick Smarties all over the cookies. She gave them purple eyes and blue buttons and orange shoes... it was very exciting.

Today, I made fudge. Like most things I make here, it doesn't taste quite right. The ingredients are just different. It drives me nuts. BUT I also made snowball cookies (while listening to Christmas music, of course) and they taste wonderful! So that's good. I'm excited to do some baking when I get home where everything will taste the way it's supposed to. I'm thinking about trying to do home-made marshmallows this year. I've never done it before but Laurie (the alto from my caroling quartet) makes them every year and she used to bring us some to eat during our breaks. They're really way nicer than normal marshmallows and I think it would be a fun thing to try to make.

Guess what -- by this time tomorrow I'll be hanging out with Hilde!! Yay! I'm really excited about that. AND by this time tomorrow Steven will be on his way to the airport! ALSO VERY EXCITING!!!

I need to figure out what I'm cooking for dinner... have a lovely day!

Christmas Chaos.

Well, Laura and I had a lovely time in London yesterday. The weather was fantastic, which worked out well because we did quite a bit of walking. We started at the Portobello Market on Portobello Road in Notting Hill (no, I did not see Hugh Grant or Julia Roberts -- bummer). This market is huge and unbelievably busy!! The directions on the website literally tell you to get off the Tube at Notting Hill Gate Station and "follow the crowd." No joke. The market is 2 miles long and split into various sections -- antiques, produce, etc. We did not traverse the entire two miles... in fact, we got tired of it pretty quickly.

We meandered (and by meandered I mean we didn't use a map and probably walked in a very squiggly line without any real idea of where we should be going) over to Oxford Street for a serious Christmas shopping experience. Along the way we found a Starbucks and enjoyed a nice walk through Paperchase (quite a fun store).

There are different Christmas markets all over London and we were pretty excited to stumble across this one on Oxford Street. It was tucked away off the busy street. It had temporary walls surrounding it and it was really pleasant because I felt like the busy city noises completely died down the moment we stepped in. We didn't buy anything there but it was fun walking around.


The rest of the day was absolutely chaotic!! Fortunately, they had closed Oxford Street to any motorized traffic for the day. Even still, there were so many people everywhere that it was hard to move. There was so much going on too. Everywhere you turned someone was trying to hand you a pamphlet or coupon or canvas bag with the American Express logo on it. There was a Marks & Spencers parade and people in elf costumes on stilts and fake snow shooting out of Selfridges -- it was crazy. Victoria happened to be in town with all of the boarding school girls for a day of shopping so we met up with her and some of her coworkers for lunch.

Of course, one of the main objectives of the day was to take Laura to Harrods since she had never been there. Holy cow. I tell you what -- going shopping in London on a Saturday just three weeks before Christmas is a pretty dumb thing to do but going to Harrods on a Saturday just three weeks before Christmas is absolutely idiotic. Seriously. There were so many people in there you couldn't even move! The whole building is decorated to the nines but it didn't even seem all that Christmassy in there because people were pushing and shoving and didn't really seem to be super happy, just eager to buy everything in sight. Madness. Absolute madness. You know that line in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge (picture Michael Caine) says "If they'd rather die then they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population!" I tell you what, if there was a surplus population in the 1800's, I'd hate to see poor Scrooge's reaction to the crowded London streets of today. Anyhow, Laura and I made our purchases and darted for the door.

Harrods had completely done us in. We were both overwhelmed and tired. Laura left to catch her train and I wandered from Hyde park up onto Oxford Street again. I just really wanted to see the Christmas lights all turned on at night time.

And that was the end of my day in London -- I couldn't take any more of it! I love Seattle. So so much. Save me some candy cane Frangos!! I'll be home soon.

So cute.

Okay, first of all, and this is not the part that is "so cute", I would like to tell you that I am sitting on the couch wearing at least three layers of clothing, with a blanket around my shoulders and my breath is coming out in little cloudy puffs and my nose feels like a little pink ice cube. I know, sad huh? We just got the boiler replaced on Tuesday and we woke up to no heat and no hot water again! Needless to say, Curtis is not very happy about this. Someone is coming over in about an hour so hopefully it will be fixed (again) soon. Oh. AND I'm drinking warm milk with brown sugar in it. I've already had a few cups of tea and we don't have any hot chocolate. This is actually quite a nice alternative.

Anyhow, on Wednesday I met up with Victoria and Bec and we toured a couple of super cute little Cotswold towns. The first stop was Burford. It was such a tiny town and it was all foggy and cold, which I think really added to the quaint little atmosphere. It sort of reminded me of Leavenworth except not quite so cutesy and, uh, Bavarian.

We shopped around for a bit and wandered through the church and then we popped into a little cafe called The Copper Kettle. We were a bit skeptical at first because it was completely empty and all of the other little restaurants we had walked by were packed, but it was quite nice. Victoria even let me serve the tea! Lucky me : )

Chocolate cake, mmm.... I could go for that right now. I wish I had kept the last 8 bites that I left on the plate. It was only 11:30am and we hadn't even had lunch yet. When Victoria and Bec went straight to the back of the menu to look at the cakes I said "oh, is it time for cake?" Victoria looked at me incredulously and said "It's always time for cake!!" It was tasty : )

It's just so cute, don't you think so? I kept saying that over and over again but that's because things just kept being cute. They had cute little Christmas decorations...

...and cute little bakeries, and cute little antique shops, and cute little sweet shops...

(Victoria's fav) AND us! We were there and we're cute too, so it worked out well. After Burford, we got back in the car and made our way over to Bourton on the water. Also very cute!! I had a very successful Christmas shopping experience in one of the cute little stores and then we stopped in a cozy (and cute!) little pub for lunch. Fish and chips! Tasty. I could go for that right now too... mostly, I think I just want some warm food. Maybe I'll make some chili.

Basically, we had a really lovely day and I had a very fun time wrestling my multiple bags of gifts on and off the trains and through the rain on my way back to Virginia Water : )

I'm still not quite finished with my Christmas shopping but I'm getting really close and I'm spending tomorrow in Harrods with Laura so I'm sure I won't have a problem checking everyone else off my list! I tried to do some shopping in Richmond yesterday but there just wasn't as much shopping to be done there as I had anticipated. I DID however, buy wrapping paper, ribbon and Christmas cards for the gifts that I won't be taking home with me, so that part of the day was successful. Well, I need to go curl up like a cat on that sunny spot on the floor for a little while so I'll catch you later.

Brrrrrrrrr.

Wow. Happy December!! I felt a significant decrease in the temperature overnight, BUT what a PERFECT day for us to get our new boiler. Wahoo!!! There is heat in this house at last! It's still not super warm because it's a huge house and difficult to heat the whole thing but it's much better than it was. Have I mentioned that I am so so so so SO excited for Hilde and Steven to come next week and equally as excited about going home after our adventures here? Because I am. So excited. I don't even know what to do with myself. I'm trying to pass the time but my efforts to pass it more quickly seem only to slow it down : ) so strange how that works. Maybe I should make some Christmas cookies... Probably. For now, I think I'm going to go make myself some coffee and turn on a Christmas movie. Time to enjoy this cozy house!